Blogs

August 30, 2013

The sign on Jeff Kantor's door says it all. In preparation for the upcoming October Final Design Review, LSST has had 14 external reviews in the past 12 weeks with another 5 reviews scheduled for the next six weeks. The most recent of these reviews, the LSST Data Management Database Architecture Review, took place August 6-7 at SLAC with a very favorable outcome. This review examined the current LSST database design, including its distributed/parallel architecture, partitioning, indexing, fault tolerance, data distribution, and schema evolution as well as the physical schema. Reviewers concluded the database architecture is technically appropriate for the project's requirements and feasible in the time and budget available.

Wednesday August 14, 2013 - More than 80 LSST team members attended the Joint Technical Meeting this week at the Omni Tucson National Resort. The August 12-15 workshop brings together the distributed team of managers, scientists, and engineers who contribute to the programmatic, design, and technical work of the LSST Project. In particular, the team is tackling interfaces and other cross-subsystem topics in preparation for the National Science Foundation Final Design Review in October. The agenda also includes external reviews of Image Simulation and the Safety Program later in the week. Here, the team poses for a group photo at the edge of the Omni golf course on Tuesday afternoon. Click the image for a larger view.

July 12, 2013 -- ITT Exelis has been awarded the optical fabrication contract for LSST’s 3.5m secondary mirror assembly (http://ls.st/fky). The two-phase contract was awarded by AURA on behalf of the LSST project. The first phase supports vendor-specific engineering design activities targeted at risk reduction. The second phase includes the optical fabrication, testing, and integration of the finished mirror into the LSST-supplied M2 cell assembly.

The unique LSST M1/M3 mirror surfaces are nearing perfection. Both mirror surfaces are being carefully polished and optically tested with completion anticipated by the end of December 2013. Testing has transitioned from the realm of mechanical measurement to optical measurement as the remaining deviations from the mirror’s perfect smooth shape are now on the scale of nanometers instead of microns.

Friday June 21, 2013 - LSST Data Management was awarded a computing resource allocation from the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) in June 2013.  This award of 530,000 compute service units and 148 terabytes of storage is a renewal of previous awards that LSST has been granted by XSEDE.  It allows DM to continue the larger scale runs associated with the sequence of Data Challenges and large-scale middleware and infrastructure tests that are necessary in preparation for the Construction phase of LSST.  This allocation will be in effect fo

The Final Design Review (FDR) for the LSST project has been scheduled for the week of October 21, 2013 in Tucson, Arizona.  This review must be completed successfully before the National Science Foundation (NSF) can release funds to start construction.  And, of course, Congress also must appropriate the funds before the NSF can release them.  We’re expecting a review format and schedule (Monday noon to Friday noon) much like the August 2011 NSF Preliminary Design Review.

LSST Institutional Members from Illinois met at Argonne National Laboratory on May 30 for the inaugural meeting of LSST@Illinois.  Organized by Salman Habib, the meeting was attended by about 40 individuals from Adler Planetarium, Argonne, Fermilab, University of Illinois/NCSA and Northwestern University.  Many in the group "bonded" previously at a Washington, DC LSST Board Meeting and decided to continue their discussion of current projects, what each institution would individually like to get out of LSST, and how they can work together to help LSST@Il

May 17, 2013:  Watch the CSPAN video of U.S. Representative Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) voicing support for LSST on the House floor (http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sites/default/files/CSPAN_2013.mp4).

May 10, 2013

LSST exhibited at the 19th Annual Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF) reception in the Rayburn House Office Building on May 7, 2013. The American Astronomical Society is a member of CNSF and sponsored LSST to participate in this year’s event with the theme: Investments in STEM Research and Education: Fueling American Innovation.

AURA announced LSST Systems Scientist Chuck Claver as one of the 2013 recipients of its Technology / Innovation Award (see http://www.aura-astronomy.org/news/awards.asp). He is being recognized for his outstanding contribution to LSST as Project Systems Engineer over the previous five years. For the complete story, visit http://ls.st/aoi.